Lazav

Lazav is a blue-black aligned shapeshifter and the current Guildmaster of House Dimir. Due to Lazav’s highly mysterious tendencies no information is known about him before his ascension to House Dimir’s Guildmaster.

Lazav may be uniquely qualified to be the Dimir guildmaster: he is a shapeshifting mage whose mysterious genius flashes with telepathic impressions of the entire Dimir network. He shapeshifts into a variety of guises as his needs and plans require; he may step out into the Ravnican streets as an elderly widow to eavesdrop at the bazaar, become a vedalken hussar of the Azorius Senate to sidestep a checkpoint, or transform into a Tin Street merchant to deceive a passing noble.

At the end of the last Ravnica trilogy, the former Dimir guild leader, the vampire Szadek, was all but destroyed: his physical body was killed, his spirit was banished to the ghostly realm of Agyrem, and his rule of House Dimir was ended. In his absence, the Dimir guild vanished almost entirely. Some guild members defected to other guilds and others rejoined the Ravnican general populace, but all retained their memories of once being part of House Dimir.

Meanwhile, a being of unknown origins took advantage of Szadek's dissolution: a magically adept shapeshifter who calls himself Lazav. In a series of inscrutable steps and using a number of disguises, he claims to have sought out obscure magics that would allow him to commune with Szadek's fading spirit. As the spell came together, Lazav was heard calling out Szadek's name and mumbling about ancient Ravnican history; some believe he attempted to avail himself of the vampire's thousands of years' worth of residual memories.

After the ritual was complete, Lazav's behavior became erratic and his schemes for power deepened. Few people, even Dimir guild members, understand what power Lazav has tapped into or what effect it has had on him. But some Dimir agents claim to have heard Lazav's whispers in their minds, believing he is somehow able to create tenuous links to the psyche of any Dimir guild member, past and present.